A fresh row has broken out between Royal Mail and the CWU postal union ahead of talks today to tryto prevent three more days of strike action across Britain this week.
The head of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, attacked the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) whenhe called on them to “shut up” and stop making “nonsensical” claims as the two sides prepared fortalks at the TUC designed to avoid further industrial action, The Guardian reported.
Following the two-day strike from last week, up to 120,000 postal workers are due to stage athree-day stoppage from Thursday which could lead to a backlog of 150 million letters. This wouldinclude nearly 44,000 staff in mail centres and network drivers on Thursday and 77,000 delivery andcollection staff on Saturday, according to the CWU.
“I hope common sense will prevail,” Crozier said yesterday on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1.“One of the ways for common sense to prevail is for people to recognise we’re in a goldfish bowland to stop some of the nonsensical things that are being said – exaggerated claims about backlogs,exaggerated claims about trying to get government involved. I think people would be better placedto, in the nicest possible way, shut up and get back to an agreement.”
Royal Mail said that the backlog of delayed mail caused by the industrial action lastThursday and Friday was expected to be reduced to five million items by the end of today.
In response to Crozier’s criticism, the CWU general secretary Billy Hayes countered on BBC1’sPolitics Show: “Adam seemed to be in denial about the impact the changes are having on people’slives and doesn’t seem to recognise that his workforce is deeply disgruntled”.
“If you talk to your post woman or postman now, it’s not a question of them working all thehours. It’s the question of them having to deal with increasing workloads, having to work longer.We’ve asked for independent assessment of the workload, and that’s been denied by Royal Mail,”Hayes added.
Dave Ward, the CWU deputy general secretary, is due to meet Mark Higson, managing director ofRoyal Mail Letters, at talks organised by the TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber at the unionumbrella group’s Congress House.
Crozier called on the union to accept a 2007 agreement drawn up by Barber. “The agreement wasall about asking our people to work all the hours they are paid to work, in a flexible way, and touse new machinery we’re bringing in,” he said.
The UK business secretary Lord Mandelson described the meeting in London, brokered by theTUC, as an opportunity to end the deadlock.
Last Tuesday, Royal Mail and the CWU had negotiated a last-minute agreement to avoid the lastweek’s strike. But the CWU rejected the proposal as outlined in a letter from Higson, saying thiswas different to what had been agreed. The agreement in turn was simply “a form of words” to keeptalking and there was no negotiated deal, the union said. It therefore went ahead with the nationalstrike.
